


Pound of Flesh, Gallon of Blood

by The_Bentley



Series: Rescue Me [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aziraphale Whump (Good Omens), Aziraphale to the Rescue (Good Omens), BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Blood, Blood and Torture, Comfort, Comforting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Crowley to the Rescue (Good Omens), Friendship/Love, Happy Ending, Healing, Hurt, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-18 10:09:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20637428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bentley/pseuds/The_Bentley
Summary: Since their trials and executions did not go as planned, Heaven and Hell will have their revenge on Aziraphale and Crowley. This time both sides decide outright torture is the way to go, leaving Aziraphale and Crowley dependent on each other for rescue.  Heaven's revenge leaves Aziraphale in danger of discorporation without hope of ever having a body again, while the magic Hell uses in Crowley's punishment could result in permanent death if not countered properly.An expansion of the 666 Fics Fics Fics on the same subject that are the first 2 parts of this series.





	1. The Compassion of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This was written per request. Enjoy. :) And no,the title's not in proper metric measurements, but I wanted to use "pound of flesh" which has its roots as a phrase in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice." So, imperial measurement it was. 
> 
> This story is full of blood, guts and other such nice things. You have been warned.
> 
> I broke down and got Tumblr. [https://www.tumblr.com/blog/the-bentley](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/theangelsflashbastard) Shut up. :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Is there something wrong?” he asked, a nervous smile on his face._
> 
> _“You have sinned, Aziraphale,” replied Michael, pleasantly, as if they were discussing the weather._
> 
> _“Yes, I know Heaven didn’t agree with me, but there was the whole trial and everything. I thought we were all right now.” Aziraphale was backing towards the front door now, hoping he could make a run for it._

Looking up from shelving books as the front door’s bell rang, Aziraphale saw the three Archangels enter. 

“Hello, can I help you?” he asked, feeling hopeful and apprehensive at the same moment. Did Heaven forgive him his transgressions?

With a wave of Michael’s hand, the human customers in the store stiffened, turned and walked out like a group of automatons. Aziraphale’s hair on the back of his neck rose in warning.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked, a nervous smile on his face.

“You have sinned, Aziraphale,” replied Michael, pleasantly, as if they were discussing the weather.

“Yes, I know Heaven didn’t agree with me, but there was the whole trial and everything. I thought we were all right now.” Aziraphale was backing towards the front door now, hoping he could make a run for it.

“There was no punishment, Aziraphale,” said Uriel, approaching him from one side, while Sandalphon and Michael cornered him from the other two. “You got off, remember? We had to find a new way.”

Sandalphon was quick for a plump angel; it only took him a moment to grab and restrain Aziraphale effectively enough the former Principality couldn’t escape, struggle though he might. Michael clapped cuffs covered in runes and connected with a chain on him. The chain between them was hung on a hook that had been conjured on one of the pillars in the center of the bookshop. Aziraphale was left standing hands over head, facing the pillar.

“What is the meaning of this?” he sputtered as angrily as he could in his fear.

“As I said, you have sinned, Aziraphale and you need to be punished,” repeated Michael. “Sandalphon has the honour this time.”

For his part, Sandalphon gave that weird little laugh as he miracled away Aziraphale’s clothing to the waist then pulled a large bullwhip out of nowhere. Aziraphale twisted around trying to see what was going on. He froze, sky blue eyes wide with terror when he saw the whip.

“There’s no need for this. I’m in exile now . . . isn’t that enough?”

He could say no more. The first lash hit his skin, causing a burning pain beyond anything he had felt before. He screamed as he felt his knees collapse, leaving him hanging by the wrists before he regained his feet. The second lash brought more agony with the tickle of blood flowing from his split skin down his back onto the waist of his trousers. By the third lash, tears had formed in his eyes. White-hot anguish filled his world, his vision misted over with red as he struggled to see. His wrists ached every time he stumbled as his knees buckled.

He screamed. Over and over until he thought he could no longer stand the pain.

The lashes kept coming, expertly placed by Sandalphon to strip off more skin with each hit, blood spattering on his books from the end of the whip. Aziraphale made soundless sobs when it struck, causing his back to explode in white-hot agony.

It wasn’t long before he was suffering from pain and loss of bodily fluids. Pieces of flesh hung off his shoulders; blood pooled on the floor. He had screamed himself hoarse as the torture just kept coming without mercy. Sandalphon cruelly stuck again and again, causing Aziraphale’s vision to go black. The blood poured out of viciously deep wounds, the skin nearly gone, leaving layers of muscle exposed. Aziraphale was convinced some lashes went bone-deep.

He had dislocated a shoulder struggling against the wretched hook that held his arms above his head. Pulling away from the lash so violently, he had torn the joint partially from its socket. Anguish shot through him every time he involuntarily flinched from the lash’s sting. 

Michael stood serenely to one side watching as if nothing vicious was happening before her eyes. Uriel stalked him like he was prey.

“Where’s your demon boyfriend, freak?” she asked as his glassy eyes attempted to focus on her, his breath coming fast. 

Shaking violently with the pain, Aziraphale knew his body was going into shock. They had somehow disabled his healing ability; he suspected it was the runes on the cuffs that were to blame. If he couldn’t heal himself soon he’d discorporate, his spirit doomed to roam bodiless now he had no side to grant him a new corporation.

He broke into soundless tears thinking of Crowley and how badly he had reacted the last time Aziraphale had been discorporated. What if it was permanent? How would they cope with that? He couldn’t just keep possessing humans. There was a distinct lack of privacy for both parties in that option.

A sound like a fire suddenly flaring to life filled the bookshop; orange light danced across the blood-spattered shelves beside them. Turning, the three stopped in horror.

“Hi. You looking for me?” Tall, dark and rather sinister-looking, Crowley stood there, the humourless grin on his face lit by the flickering hellfire encasing one hand. “Gabriel still doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, does he? That’s so unfortunate for you since you’re two seconds away from becoming ash.”

Uriel sneered, “You wouldn’t.”

Michael and Uriel prepared to smite. Crowley threw a shield over the wounded, bound Aziraphale who didn’t seem to realize he was even there. 

An eyebrow cocked above Crowley’s sunglasses. “I took out a Duke of Hell with holy water. What makes you think I’d spare some Archangels?” The hellfire appeared on his other hand, then quickly climbed up both arms, racing over his body until he was covered in it. “Shall we play?”

A fireball whizzed by Michael’s head, going out before it hit some of Aziraphale’s rare first editions. Crowley had fired a warning shot at the cruel Archangels. They backed away. Crowley was Different; like Aziraphale, he had Gone Native. They did not know how powerful he really was or if a smiting could still discorporate him.

Another fireball hit Sandalphon’s bullwhip, causing him to drop it quickly in panic. A third nearly singed the sleeve of Uriel’s jacket. She raised her arms above her head.

“Please, Crowley! Just stop! We surrender!”

“Yes!” cried Sandalphon, no longer the brave bully without his whip. “Please just let us go. . .”

Crowley’s eyes glowed behind his sunglasses. “You will not bother him again, do you understand?”

All three nodded, faces showing their terror.

“Good. Now when you get back up that that tasteless waste of space you call home, you tell Gabriel if he so much as _thinks _of punishing Aziraphale again, I will storm Upstairs. Not even the assembled Host will be able to stop me from taking my revenge on him and anyone else who chooses to stand in my way.”

They bolted, becoming little more than blue streaks flying up towards Heaven.

The hellfire disappeared as swiftly as it came, Crowley’s eyes calming as he dissipated the shield before carefully looking his wounded angel over, concern and anxiousness etched on his face.

“Aziraphale? Are you in there?” his panicked voice asked. “Talk to me.”

Unable to speak, Aziraphale could feel him removing the cuffs, casting them aside with a _clink_, then he was painfully in Crowley’s arms being lowered on to a mattress wished up on the floor. He whimpered softly in a soundless manner, nothing but an exhale of breath coming out. Then he turned dulled, pain-filled eyes towards the demon, who smiled reassuringly at him.

“I’m here now. It’s ok,” Crowley soothed. “Those cuffs were designed to not allow you to heal yourself. You can now. You start while I look over the damage, ok?”

Crowley attempted to examine the severe wounds with a sick feeling, causing Aziraphale to writhe in pain. “I’m sorry, angel, but I have to touch you to numb it.”

The pain dissipated, but the pressure of Crowley’s fingers remained. The demon stared not so much at the wounded back of his best friend, but a mess of chewed up meat that once was skin, muscle and tissue. He tried his best to keep from gagging. 

“Oh God, it’s bad, angel. I’m going to move us upstairs where it’s more private. I’ll need time to heal you.”

The world changed to Aziraphale’s bedroom, a tiny room with a small window above the bookshop itself. Crowley had brought the conjured mattress with them, not wanting to move Aziraphale any more than he had to right now. They would have to start healing him here, on floor, laying on that bloody mattress.

With a wave, he had stripped them both naked then turned Aziraphale upon his side so he could spoon against his back, every part of him possible touching the angel from chest to feet. It wasn’t like the two lovers hadn’t seen each other unclothed, nor was now the time to be dealing with undergarments that would just become soaked in gore before stiffening up while they dried. He ignored the fact that his entire chest was currently covered in the angel’s bodily fluids. One blood-covered arm he draped over Aziraphale’s side; the other he wedged as close to the angel’s bare skin as possible. 

Healing of this magnitude worked best with skin-to-skin contact, more contact there was, the better and faster the healing could take place.

“Shh, you go to sleep. Let me work on you.”

Crowley touched Aziraphale’s temple, putting him into an extremely deep sleep, almost a coma. He could work better if Aziraphale stayed still, plus healing would happen faster if the angel was not stressing out. Crowley himself slowed his breathing, closed his eyes and started a meditation that carried him off into a healing trance. The trance allowed him to concentrate everything he had on fixing those deep dangerous wounds without distraction from the outside world.

They lay there for days, the blood between their bodies binding them together as it dried. Aziraphale lay in his near-coma, completely dead to the world. Crowley stayed tranced while he was awake, sleeping often to renew his powers, then falling back into meditation to return to the trance upon awakening. 

The healing and deep sleep lasted until the final bit of Aziraphale’s skin knitted itself back together leaving behind only some traces of the corporation-threatening whipping he had received. Such scars he could heal at his own leisure without Crowley’s help. Upon awakening, he found himself nude on a mattress stained red with his dried blood, Crowley laying naked behind him, slumbering. 

He shuddered to think of the drastic actions Crowley took to save his life. This was not the type of healing one took on lightly. It seriously depleted the healer, leaving them a few weeks of recovery to regain full reserves of their power again.

“Crowley?” His voice cracked with disuse.

“Angel? How you feel?” Crowley asked sleepily as he stirred awake.

“Been better.”

Aziraphale felt fingers stroke his hair, lips kiss the nape of his neck. 

The demon began to untangle himself from his positon on the mattress carefully enough he didn’t feel like he was ripping layers of skin off when he separated from the dried blood. “Let’s get you into that bed, angel, where it’s clean and dry.”

Aziraphale struggled to sit up, still unsteady. Wishing the mess away first, Crowley helped him to his feet before they both walked shakily across the floor to the bed they had spent so many nights in together. The pair collapsed into it, pulling up the old-fashioned quilts over bodies feeling exhausted for different reasons. Aziraphale was still affected by the torture he endured while Crowley was weak from power depletion. The demon tucked the quilts in better around them once they both settled. Here, they would be able to recover their strength.

“Never again, angel,” promised Crowley. “I’ll never let another person hurt you ever again.”

He placed a careful kiss on Aziraphale’s forehead. The angel kissed him in return clumsily on the cheek. The two of them lay there cuddling, touching, kissing, thankful they still could. Rejoicing in what felt like a new lease on life, the pair snuggled up as close as was possible and fell asleep again, safe in each other’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about having a big old hellfire fight, then decided not to. The Archangels are nothing but bullies and cowards in my view. They're not going to fight Crowley as long as they have an escape route. Crowley's not really a fighter, anyway. I feel he will if he has to, but he'd rather not.


	2. Amour Vincit Omnia (Love Conquers All)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Aziraphale examined the situation, seeing the magical daggers with their malicious runes along their hilts. Anxious, he looked from one to the other, then at Crowley’s face. The demon only seem partially aware of what was going on, his serpentine eyes clouding over with shock._
> 
> _He had to be careful. Pull them out in the wrong order or without the proper preparation, and he’d kill Crowley. Permanently. _

The punishment was going to come; it was just a matter of when. 

Crowley knew it, so he tried to be vigilant at all times, but even the best-laid plans aren’t always successful. One simply _can’t_ be vigilant every moment of every day. They caught him in his flat, off-guard, busy giving his plants their usual “lecture” as he watered them. He turned, startled, to find them standing there, looking like they were going to enjoy what came next.

“Crowley,” said Hastur, a nasty smile spreading across his face. “It’s time to pay for what you did.”

Panicked, Crowley looked from him to Dagon. “What I did? I did literally nothing. It was all up to the boy. I couldn’t have started or stopped Armageddon if I wanted to.”

“You know exactly what you did and you’re not going to talk you way out of it,” replied Hastur. 

“The hospital was just an ordinary cock-up, you know. How was I supposed to know two women were giving birth there that night? That was on the nuns. They should have been more careful about the switch. There was only so much I could do.”

Crowley backed away, hoping to get into his office where he could barricade himself until he could think of Plan A. Unfortunately, that contingency had been considered since the last time they came to collect him he had lethally booby-trapped the room. He went down with a hard crack to the head from the hilt of the knife Dagon carried, crumpling into a nearly unconscious pile on the carpet. She had crept around behind him while he was babbling his excuses.

They each grabbed him underneath an arm, dragging him back to his feet. Groggy, he tried to break free, but his muzzy head refused to communicate properly with his legs. A dizzying second later, Crowley found himself in the beautiful English countryside. 

It was night; the moon was bright above them. Switching to his night vision, he surveyed the landscape, recognizing it as an old site where demons were sacrificed to the darker gods of Ancient Rome. The altar had crumbled into a pile of boulders over the centuries, but the ruin of a stone wall that ran behind it was still in fairly good shape.

“So old school, guys,” Crowley commented, insults hiding fear. “I’d rather think you’d have better taste when it came to reprimanding me. This is hardly your style. It’s a bit overdramatic, don’t you think?”

“I think this’ll do nicely,” commented Dagon, throwing Crowley down before the wall.

Hastur forced the woozy lesser demon to his feet. Crowley stumbled upright, his head still aching. Before he could get a good grip on the situation, both the Lord and Duke of Hell had grabbed him again, forcing his back against the ancient wall.

Crowley struggled, but it was a futile gesture. He was up against two demons who outranked him, therefore; he didn’t stand a chance. They quickly overpowered him, yanking an arm out to the side and holding it there as Crowley writhed and punched at both Dagon and Hastur with his free hand.

“You can’t escape this time, Crowley. And your best friend Aziraphale isn’t going to ever be able to find you, either,” Hastur was saying as he kept Crowley’s arm in place against the wall, perpendicular to his body.

Somehow they had managed to lift him a meter or so off the ground, leaving him free to kick them and he lashed out as much as he could in his fight to free himself. Tired of the situation, Dagon hit him with a paralyzing spell. He could still move his head, but little more. 

“I’d think twice before head-butting anyone if I were you, Crowley,” she snapped at him. 

Were they just going to hold him here for a while? That wasn’t much of a punishment, Crowley reckoned. But he thought that thought too soon. At a hand signal from Dagon, a third demon standing unnoticed off to one side approached the scene.

“Ready for me?” The demon just known as “Disposable” due to his many, many discoroporations, mostly at the hands of an angry Hastur, approached, toting a basket full of long daggers etched with runes. 

Crowley’s eyes widened in recognition. “No!”

“Afraid so,” said Dagon with ill-concealed delight. 

Disposable handed one evil-looking dagger to Hastur, who grinned before showing its glinting rune-covered blade and hilt to Crowley by the light of moon. “I’m so going to enjoy this.”

With a thrust, he jabbed the knife completely through Crowley’s shoulder into the stone wall behind him. Crowley screamed as he felt it shatter his shoulder blade then melt the spell that held him motionless to the wall. Those runes existed to nullify demonic powers.

He thrashed as Hastur chose another dagger. This one was thrust sadistically in, breaking bones in his elbow with a sickening snap as he fought to free himself from this torture. His blood dripped down his shirt sleeve while he twisted in agony, widening the wounds with his struggling. With superhuman strength, he pulled his other arm free of Dagon’s grasp and clawed at the daggers sunk into his flesh in a panicked attempt to pull them out. She quickly grabbed him again, pinning his hand against the cold stone. 

A third knife sliced through his lower arm, painfully separating wrist bones. Breathing coming hard now while he concentrated on stilling his body to prevent more agony, injury and bleeding out. Every movement caused the wounds to rip open wider and he knew this was just the beginning. He had one more arm and a lot more body for them to poke knives through.

Three more daggers skewered his other arm, Crowley crying out as metal sliced through skin and muscle, piercing through bone on occasion. More blood exited his body, flowing down to soak his clothing, some dripping directly down to the ground, staining the grass below. 

Hastur carefully pierced his side with a dagger, deliberately missing lungs and diaphragm. Crowley knew exactly why. The bastard wanted to listen to him cry out in his pain as much as Dagon did and without his powers this body required air passing over the vocal chords for sound to happen. No breath, no scream.

Hoarseness and blood loss robbed him of his ability to vocalize by the time they pinned his legs, daggers stuck through his thighs and shins, breaking bones in two cases. His head hung loosely, chin resting on his chest. He was effectively trapped; the runes preventing him from escaping.

Disposable was starting to look a bit uncomfortable about the entire situation, but past lessons taught him to keep his mouth shut about it no matter how much he regretted inflicting cruelty on another being. The other two would not regret their actions; Crowley was nothing to them.

He watched helplessly as they walked away, Dagon and Hastur starting up a light conversation as if what they had not just performed an act of graphic torture. Disposable shot him one final look of pity before all three sank into the ground. There he was left, metal grinding against bone, his blood dripping out on the ground below him; a sacrifice to Roman gods long forgotten. He’d be here, hanging painfully from that wretched wall, until he discorporated from the trauma to his body and there was no way he was getting himself free.

Unless . . .

_Aziraphale, _he sent with mind, heart and soul._ Angel . . .  
_

All his love for his angel filled that call; all the bliss he felt when they were together. His one hope.

Miles away in his bookshop, settled in for the night with wine and book, Aziraphale paused. “Crowley?”

He felt the urgent tingle again, coming to his mind from a location somewhere outside of London. Crowley was in trouble. Standing up, he closed his eyes, trying not to panic. In his mind’s map of the area, he located the spot throbbing with Crowley’s pain. The angel snapped his fingers, appearing in an unfamiliar field before the ruins of a stone wall built long ago.

“No!” he breathed as he looked, horrified, upon the crucified Crowley pinned to that wall like a specimen ready for dissection. “What have they done to you, Crowley?”

He examined the situation, seeing the magical daggers with their malicious runes along their hilts. Anxious, he looked from one to the other, then at Crowley’s face. The demon only seem partially aware of what was going on, his serpentine eyes clouding over with shock.

He had to be careful. Pull them out in the wrong order or without the proper preparation, and he’d kill Crowley. Permanently. He sent a miracle to take the pain away only to have it bounce back to him, confirming what he suspected. 

“I need to go slowly here, my dear. If I don’t do this right, it’s going to cause more trouble. Just hang on for me, all right?” 

Aziraphale had seen these types of traps before, weapons meant to hold a supernatural being as a sacrifice. Only it was another angel that time, not his beloved demon. But he knew the countering spell, that was what was important. Murmuring it while touching the dagger hilts in a certain pattern, he nullified their effects on Crowley’s powers.

“Don’t do anything, my dear. Allow me to handle it.”

Now, to pull them out in the correct order while pouring another spell into them to keep them from killing the demon.

Starting at the wrist of Crowley’s left arm, he pulled the knives out of that arm first, causing Crowley to convulse with pain. The right arm was next, in the same pattern. Gently holding the half-freed Crowley against the wall, Aziraphale encouraged the demon to wrap his least damaged arm around his shoulders. He was bleeding heavily, an issue Aziraphale corrected with a bit of healing power. 

The dagger in his side was the next to come out. Crowley was crying in hoarse sobs by now, the small numbing magic Aziraphale could sustain while countering the daggers' dark magic only helped a tiny amount. Ignoring the blood staining his clothes, Aziraphale removed the daggers in Crowley’s legs, left then right, lowering him to the grass while cooing encouragement.

“We’re almost done. I promise. I’m going to be able to start healing you soon. Just stay with me.”

Love. Bliss. He felt them now. The positive emotions that boosted the signal enough he was able to locate Crowley.

Drawing upon his ability to smite, the angel destroyed every single hated dagger that pinned his lover to that stone wall.

Sinking to his knees, Aziraphale sat with his demon weeping silently in his lap, stroking his hair and covering him with kisses, smears of blood be damned. “You’re safe now. They can’t hurt you anymore.”

“You heard, angel,” whispered Crowley. “You came.”

“Of course, my love. Let’s get you home now to heal.”

Two figures disappeared, off to the bookshop where the angel lovingly ministered to the demon who would recover after a few days of healing. 

Aziraphale had tucked him into bed, spending hours working on putting bones back together then handling muscle and skin lacerations. It was slow going because of the magical nature of Crowley’s wounds, but he was determined that he would have him good as new, everything healed the way it should be with no scars to show what he’d been through. He tended the demon during the day and spent the nights in a comfortable chair beside the bed that he conjured just for that purpose, reading while Crowley slept. 

One morning he looked up from his book to find an awake Crowley gazing at him, his face no longer drawn and pale. The demon blushed, looking away.

“Hi, angel.”

He tested his nearly-healed limbs, finding he had full movement with only a little scarring left. Aziraphale had outdone himself given things could have so easily turned out a lot worse.

Aziraphale smiled, suddenly feeling very protective of this demon he had come to love more than anything else on this Earth. Before he knew what he was doing, the words were tumbling out of his mouth. “Come stay here with me, my dear? If only just for a bit while everyone’s tempers cool down? I refuse to leave you alone again. I couldn’t stand it if something else dreadful were to happen to you.”

Crowley smiled at him in return and his answer was pure bliss.


End file.
